By Melanie Grier When we think about advocacy, examples of movements for social change may come to mind before thoughts of how the need for advocacy shows up in our everyday lives, especially if we belong to the dominant culture and generally have less to advocate for. As a cisgendered, white-settler female in a heterosexual partnership living in colonial-Canada, I …
A Winter Birth
My fourth little one was born at home. She was my first home-birthed baby. My first was a c-section due to breech, my second and third (twins) were a breech hospital vbac. With baby four, we decided to go with midwives for the personal relationship and their acceptance of our desire for a natural birth. When the time came, our …
A Curve Ball
After I married my husband, I often imagined what our future would be like together. I pictured what our home life would be like. A steady stream of chaos with kids going to and fro, countless activities, gadgets littered about the yard, leaving no question to onlookers that kids were being raised there. I thought of what my husband would …
Twin Birth of Isaiah and Elijah
My pregnancy test was negative. I asked my mom what could be wrong with me as I had to pee all the time! She looked me straight in the eye and said, “It is because you are pregnant with twins.” I assured her I was not and asked for other suggestions to determine the cause of my new discomfort. She …
A Baby, Not Pizza: Word Choice in Childbirth
Maternity care is changing, especially with the move to fund midwifery under Alberta Health Care. Women have been birthing babies since time began, and looking back in history, one can see that there have always been women there to support other women through childbirth. By the end of the 19th century, however, midwives in the United States and Canada were …
Hormone Soup — Your Body’s Preparation for Birth
A woman I met once told me about an extraordinary place to visit. She spoke about it with such enthusiasm and love that I had craved knowing more about this wonderful place. When I pressed her for more details she said she could not remember much about it! The place was called Labourland, she told me, and she had …